The "be less bad" environmental approaches to industry have been crucial in sending important messages of environmental concern--messages that continue to catch the public's attention and spur important research. At the same time, they forward conclusions that re less useful. Instead of presenting an inspiring and exciting vision of change, conventional environmental approaches focus on what not to do. Such proscriptions can be seen as a kind of guilt management for our collective sins, a familiar placebo in Western culture. In very early societies, repentance, atonement, and sacrifice were typical reactions to complex systems, like nature, over which people felt they had little control. Societies around the world developed belief systems based on myth in which bad weather, famine, or disease meant one had displeased the gods, and sacrifices were a way to appease them. In some cultures, even today, one must sacrifice something of value in order to regain the blessing of the gods (or god) and reestablish stability and harmony. Environmental destruction is a complex system in its own right--widespread, with deeper causes that are difficult to see and understand. Like our ancestors, we may react automatically, with terror and guilt, and we may look for ways to purge ourselves--which the "eco-efficiency" movement provides in abundance, with its exhortations to consume and produce less by minimizing, avoiding, reducing and sacrificing. Humans are condemned as the one species on the planet guilty of burdening it beyond what it can withstand; as such, we must shrink our presence, our systems, our activities, and even our population so as to become almost invisible. (Those who believe population is the root of our ills think people should mostly stop having children.) The goal is zero: zero waste, zero emissions, zero "ecological footprint." As long as human beings are regarded as "bad", zero is a good goal. But to be less bad is to accept things as they are, to believe that poorly designed, dishonorable, destructive systems are the best humans can do. This is the ultimate failure of the "be less bad" approach: a failure of the imagination. William McDonough & Michael Braungart

This is not a blog.

It's a personal challenge.

I've tried to write a blog since I heard about blogs. I started one about art, one about random thoughts, one with funny links... Nothing lasted more than a couple of weeks. Until I discovered Posterous. I thought it was genius... and then it shut down and I only noticed it when it was too late to recover anything. Now I've fallen in love with Squarespace, and I've decided to try again, hoping neither my discipline nor technology will give up this time.